California Bill Calls for Tech to Make New Cars Unable to Speed
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46554218/new-car-regulated-speed-limit-california-bill/
Someday in the not too distant future, it might no longer be possible to drive a brand-new car faster than 80 mph in California. That's because state senator Scott Wiener earlier this week proposed a new bill that aims to prevent certain new vehicles from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. In California, the maximum posted speed limit is 70 mph, meaning anything north of 80 mph would be off limits.
The Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets—or SAFER California Streets, for short—is a package of bills that includes SB 961 that was published Tuesday, which essentially calls for speed governors on new cars and trucks built or sold in California starting with the 2027 model year. These vehicles would be required to have an "intelligent speed limiter system" that electronically prevents the driver from speeding above the aforementioned threshold.
Stopping Speeding With Tech
California senator Scott Wiener (D) wants to require new cars to have tech to prevent cars from speeding.
A California lawmaker announced a bill Wednesday that would require new passenger vehicles and large trucks sold in California to be equipped with technology that would prevent them from going more than 10 miles an hour above the speed limit.
If passed, Senate Bill 961 would require vehicles, beginning with model year 2027, that are manufactured or sold in California to come with a speed governor, also known as an intelligent speed limiter. It would make California the first state in the nation to mandate this technology.
These devices match a vehicle's global positioning system (GPS) location with a database of speed limits to figure out what speed a vehicle should be traveling at during any given time. They also sometimes use onboard cameras to read speed limit signs. With this information, the devices are then able to prevent the driver from speeding more than 10 miles an hour above the speed limit.
Drivers would be able to temporarily override the speed governor device, according to the proposal.
The requirement for speed governors would not apply to emergency vehicles.
I for one can't wait for the hackers to change the database so freeway speed limits are 15 MPH.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by weirsbaski on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:11AM (7 children)
I'm confused- are they mandating a speed-governor, or are they making an excuse to mandate GPS modules built into cars? (And would the GPS have a "we forgot to mention" requirement about being able to broadcast its position to any police radio at any time?)
(Score: 4, Informative) by EJ on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:39AM (1 child)
I get your point, but what makes you think all the cars with the OnStar and other similar technologies don't already have the capability to do this?
We're all (mostly) carrying around a mobile GPS that could be used against us at any time already. It's part of the downward dystopian spiral we've been in for awhile now.
As for this new bill, I wish I could say it's the dumbest piece of legislation I've heard of recently, but it's not. It's only ONE of the dumbest.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:37PM
OTOH, it's legal to disconnect on-star. I doubt it would be legal to disconnect the governor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spamalope on Sunday January 28 2024, @06:24AM (1 child)
And in addition to the location, auto-toll charges. Now every road is a toll road! It's to reduce pollution, congestion, save the world, funnel more cash to my brother in law etc...
My current car reports the speed limit on the current road and is wrong 50% of the time at least...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @02:29PM
>is wrong 50% of the time at least...
That's the kicker. I was driving a rental down a twisty Tennessee backroad and it decided that the speed limit was 55mph - 55mph was nigh impossible without ending up in a ditch on those blind hill curves.
Other places I'd pass a 55 or even 65mph speed limit sign and it would still be showing me 35mph on the dash speed limit notice, for miles.
I like my digitally controlled electronic fuel injection. On manual transmission vehicles it's easy enough to swap out the factory ECU for something like this: https://speeduino.com/home/ [speeduino.com] With modern automatic transmissions (over 98% of the new cars sold in the US) it's much more difficult to take digital control of your vehicle.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @01:06PM
> GPS modules built into cars
I can see it now from AliExpress -- nicely tailored GPS antenna Faraday cages (aka "speed condoms").
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:05PM
yes, probably the GPS in every car, additionally with direct control of speed is the goal. If they can limit you to 55 they can limit you to 0. which effectively allows them to GPS location-gate every vehicle. So they can effectively make it impossible for most people to enter a center zone of a city, or any other area. they could slow or stop all traffic around certain areas where maybe "more important" people need to travel to and from quickly.
they're using the age-old "trade your personal freedom for a promise of more safety" tactic and it seems to work every time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday January 29 2024, @02:46AM
Note that all the articles are saying "10mph above the POSTED speed limit."
Which would absolutely require invasive, full-time tracking.
And it gets nuts: there's a main drag in Lancaster California where the speed limit is (or at least was when I lived there) different on each side of the street (I called the county and asked WTF; seems it's a zoning boundary thing). Turn across the four lanes and find your car jerked to a different speed in mid-street. Doesn't that sound extra-safe to you??
BTW my sister knows the guy. "Lives in S.F. and I don't believe he even owns a car. Been a decent champion of housing legislation but a real tool when he goes outside that lane."
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:54AM (6 children)
If passed it'll last maybe a week, right up until the first lawsuit from the family of someone who was killed because their car prevented them from accelerating away from whatever it was that ended up killing them.
To get an idea of how clueless this wiener is, even without justified emergency speeding how is he expecting cars to overtake if they can't go any faster than the overall traffic speed?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Sunday January 28 2024, @10:08AM (3 children)
> first lawsuit
The legislature makes the law that enables one to initiate a lawsuit. If the legislature changes the law, it is likely to change it in such a way that a law suit is not possible.
> how is he expecting cars to overtake if they can't go any faster than the overall traffic speed
Why would you overtake a car travelling at the speed limit, if not to travel faster than the speed limit?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday January 28 2024, @01:17PM (1 child)
So no lawsuit, but the car and its maker will be torn apart (along with the lawmakers passing the law) in the court of public opinion, from sensationalist newspapers to Xitter and Reddit.
That better?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:41PM
> the court of public opinion
Quite likely.
Scott Wiener represents SF and is a safe democrat seat so he is unlikely to feel much heat from this sort of legislation. It might sell quite well with "young urbanites" who use public transport for most travel and are probably concerned with environmental issues - I guess that covers a fair proportion of his constituents. The older folks down Palo Alto way are less likely to be happy, but that is not his seat. I am sure he has thought it through (I don't know SF that well).
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:42PM
To get to the nearest break in traffic so I can move over and then exit.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @02:32PM (1 child)
>the first lawsuit from the family of someone who was killed because their car prevented them from accelerating away from whatever it was that ended up killing them.
In Texas the Judge and Jury will just question why the adults of the family weren't carrying personal arsenals in the vehicle with which to defend themselves.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by PiMuNu on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:15PM
Zombies!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:58AM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by EEMac on Sunday January 28 2024, @02:28PM (3 children)
"Cars driven by chauffers, police, and the military don't need the limiters because these are trained professionals who know how to handle vehicles at high speeds."
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @02:36PM (2 children)
>"Cars driven by chauffers ... don't need the limiters because these are trained professionals who know how to handle vehicles at high speeds."
Like Princess Di?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 28 2024, @03:59PM (1 child)
Or the people chasing Princess Di. They're pros too.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @04:38PM
I don't doubt that some paparazzi would find ways to get vehicles without speed limiters.
There's also the point: none of them crashed and burned...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:22PM (1 child)
One thing you should know about Sen. Scott Wiener is that he plays to attract attention. In reality he is a Dino who is a tool of Developers and the Building industry. He should be a darling of the Libtards because his bills seem to be written by the Ayn Rand Institute using the principals of Objectivism developed by Ayn Fand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism [wikipedia.org]
He really cares only about promoting himself, and only pretends to care about the homeless on order build his own power base.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:46PM
The proposal above to nanny every vehicle in California shows how broken your narrative is. No way that would ever come out of these political niches.
(Score: 2) by PhilSalkie on Sunday January 28 2024, @06:54AM (6 children)
The biggest issue with speed limits is there's a huge amount of roadway which has really unclear limits - you go through a toll booth, the car reads the sign and sets the speed limit to 15. That's cute, but there's no speed limit sign between there and the highway - so it'll think the limit is 15 all the way until it's merged, and may or may not reset its concept of the limit until it reads another sign.
When entering a roadway from a merge, the software _should_ track backwards along its internal map of the new road, looking for speed limit markers so it can know what the speed limit is where the car is now (for reasons of data size, I suspect, it doesn't seem to have a speed limit stored for each minimum mapped segment of roadway.) Nav systems don't seem do that backtracking, though - they just assume whatever speed limit the road you were on had, that's what the new road should have.
Similarly, there's signs which are _really_ variable - school speed limits when signs are flashing, or "when children are present" - that's really not going to be easy to program into a car or a mapping system. Add to that signs in yellow that indicate temporary limits, variable limit signs which are white on black instead of black on white which the cars don't read as well, signs in unusual locations like on overpasses, all things that make it unlikely that a car can really know what the speed limit is.
Honestly, it seems beyond the capability of most of the USA to keep the lines painted on the roads, never mind mark all the speed limits correctly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ls671 on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:09AM (2 children)
Simple solution: carry your own signs and have your car do anything you want.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 5, Funny) by zocalo on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:36AM (1 child)
Unless your vehicle actually reaches that, in which case you have a whole other bunch of problems.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 29 2024, @01:39AM
On the plus side, if your vehicle approaches C, you'll be out of the cop's jurisdiction before he can put his car in gear.
When I was growing up, we had a village constable who would chase speeders through the village - and stop at the village limits. He never dreamed of chasing anyone any further. I guess he might have called the sheriff department, or the state police, but he damned sure wasn't giving chase himself.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Sunday January 28 2024, @10:12AM (1 child)
Any solution that requires a sign to be recorded on a car camera and for the car's text recognition algorithm to correctly interpret the new speed limit is fundamentally flawed. Fog, heavy rain, poor lighting, etc etc.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:47PM
I drove a rental car into an downtown area on highway 45, the dingy speed limit 20 sign was next to the brighter highway 45 sign. The cruise control had some kind of automatic matching to the posted speed feature and we had been cruising in a correctly identified speed limit 30 zone before that, auto-slowed from the 45 zone before it. So, of course, we come to the speed limit 20 area and instead of dropping 10mph, the car starts to accelerate 15mph... fun times.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @04:49PM
The biggest issue with speed limits is there's a huge amount of leeway typically given in their enforcement. Never really clearly defined - most places, most times you can go 10 over without any concern of being stopped. Some places 15. Other times, an officer will outright lie about the speed they measured you doing because they want to punish you for their perception of your bad judgement - giving a ticket for 25 over because it's a much bigger penalty than the 19 over you were really doing. Then there are the small towns (several famous Louisiana parishes) which get most of their revenue from speeding fines and will write you for 1mph over the limit, possibly even when you are doing 1mph under if they're having a low income week because: how are you going to prove to the local judge that you were?
With decades of training in this sloppy system the drivers of the fleet have, mostly, learned how to operate safely with a heterogeneous set of interpretations of the speed limits - people drive different speeds according to their appetite for risk, and as such don't clump and cluster as much as they would if everyone were trying to match a hard limit speed number. With true enforcement of the limits, I doubt that many would start choosing to drive 5-10 under the limit, even if the limits were raised 15...
Oh, and back on the capriciousness of enforcement... the highest risks of getting a speeding ticket come when the weather is best and safest for driving. Speed traps in the pouring rain are unheard of- why would the officer ever bother to get wet over a speeding infraction?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday January 28 2024, @10:26AM (3 children)
I usually try to drive at or near, +/- 5mph, the locally posted speed limit but there are times when I have completely ignored traffic laws and gone way over the posted speed limit and pretty much ran stop signs and red lights. If a police car had seen me and hit their lights I would have ignored them until I reached my destination.
Why? Because I was driving my mother to the hospital when she had a heart attack. She spent the next 5 days in the ICU with the doctors telling my brother and I that she had a 50/50 chance. She survived much to our families joy.
There are times when you have to ignore the speed limits, and there is no fscking way in hell I will let my car's ability to get someone/thing timely medical aid be hobbled buy some stupid law that some idiot legislator came up with because they wanted to have a nice sound bite for their re-election campaign.
Just my 2 yen.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:10PM
You know... rather than hard limits, strict enforcement by vehicles that won't obey their drivers' inputs, or speed enforcement cameras on fixed posts, I would much rather have a system that:
A) adjusted limits according to conditions. Example: if the 20 miles of road ahead is clear of other vehicles and unlikely to have wildlife crossing, no speed limit - any problems you encounter are strictly your own liability. When another car is oncoming within 5 miles or traveling in your direction within 1 mile, relative speed safety limits come into effect. Speed limits reduce further for: congestion, pedestrians present, weather conditions, active school crossings, etc.
B) warned of the degree of infraction you will be charged with if you continue to exceed the current limit for more than X time or by Y mph. For instance: on a two lane road with little traffic, you might be given a one minute grace period in which to perform a pass of a slower vehicle, if that slower vehicle is significantly below your current recommended speed limit.
C) video recorded your explanation of why you find it necessary to exceed the limit at the time you choose to do so
D) automatically charged with the infraction after your have exceeded the limits and warning periods, with the option to appeal as you have with a roadside issued citation.
E) escalating penalties for scofflaws, up to and including loss of driving privileges to be enforced by non-start of any new vehicle upon presentation of your driving license.
F) implied: car start systems locked to personal identifications / driving privileges. Limits set by the owner, and for a fun fiction plot element: overridable by appeal to the owner, or authorities in some circumstances. Liability for official commandeering of the vehicle to be extremely high, but in the case of your mother with the heart attack, you could possibly appeal for and receive permission to commandeer a stranger's vehicle for the necessary trip - only paying them something like 10x of the going Uber rate for the time the vehicle is removed from their availability and miles driven - assuming no damages are incurred. Next door neighbors (who like each other sufficiently) might set their vehicles to "automatic approval on need" without going through the authorities. Drivers who abuse this option might find themselves in 100x payment mode up to 2x the value of the vehicle, and if they don't have sufficient credit might be locked out from using the option and told to wait for other transportation options to arrive. This, of course, is a not-so-distant cousin of the ZTrip and similar car sharing services tried on limited basis for the past 10+ years.
There are significant issues with communication drop-outs, legacy vehicles on the roads, etc. which could mostly be handled by continuation of the current (deeply flawed) system of posted speed limits, random enforcement, etc. for those legacy vehicles.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday January 28 2024, @06:37PM (1 child)
Yeah, this. When it's an emergency, when lives are at stake, speeding is more than acceptable, it would be reprehensible of you not to do all in your power to save lives.
When Mt. St. Helens erupted, everyone nearby drove away as fast as their cars would go. Arguably, they shouldn't have been hanging out so close, knowing that an eruption was imminent. But you know how people are-- there are always a few. I read of a story in which to escape the eruption, one vehicle was doing 100 mph, and passed another that was doing only 80 mph. After the eruption ended, they stopped to wait for the car they'd passed. It never came. Apparently, 80 mph wasn't fast enough. Yeah, it's an exceedingly rare circumstance to have to flee a volcanic eruption. However, California has quite a few volcanoes. None of them have erupted in centuries, but they aren't all considered dormant.
This idea of forcing obedience to speed limits is really, really dumb. Presumes that the people who set speed limits are honest and infallible, that there will never be good reason to speed, that this system will never malfunction and thereby cripple or totally disable a vehicle, and that it can't be hacked. Can you imagine car jackers or robbers setting the speed limit to 5 mph, the better to steal from a passing motorist? How about rogue police departments messing with the system, to produce more violations, to give them an excuse to issue expensive fines, and thus lining the municipality's coffers? This last has been done many times. But it does raise one potential good thing about this idea: if it can't be messed with, it could put an end to speed traps. However, I think other means to kill the speed trap are working well enough.
A person on the spot is going to be in position to make superior judgments about speed, far better than some brainless decree enacted years ago. Most of the time, there's little to no reason to speed. When there is, let them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @10:36PM
>How about rogue police departments messing with the system, to produce more violations, to give them an excuse to issue expensive fines,
A) rogue police departments tend not to be this bright
B) rogue police departments do not need to be this bright, they can simply lie under oath to their poker buddy: the judge
C) rogue police departments which produce significant revenue for their municipalities through speeding fines have operated quite successfully for many decades without the need for anything as complex as hacking.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Ingar on Sunday January 28 2024, @11:39AM (1 child)
Except around government buildings, where the speed limit would jump to 90 MPH.
Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.
(Score: 2) by cereal_burpist on Monday January 29 2024, @02:57AM
(Pulling a wagon full of phones down the sidewalk along Main St... Google Maps interpreted it as a major traffic jam.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday January 28 2024, @02:28PM (3 children)
While it looks funny bullying in a Legal paradigm, it is endangering pure nonsense in a Technical paradigm.
When you travel at allowed top speed, you still may need to accelerate ephemerally to escape a dangerous traffic or criminal situation.
Or speeding to save someone's life, like carrying a bleeding/birthing/heart attacked person to hospital as fast as you can.
The first practical result of this law I can predict for you, stupid woke herd, is the easy gang carjacking.
And lot of unnecessary deaths.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 28 2024, @04:06PM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Sunday January 28 2024, @04:33PM (1 child)
There is no limit to that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 28 2024, @04:36PM
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 28 2024, @03:17PM (7 children)
Pretty much all cars manufactured today have built-in governors. They've been in commercial trucks for more than 20 years now, more like 25 years. Technician hooks up to the computer, and sets the parameters of the engine. They set the horsepower, the torque, and govern the speed, all at one go. Tesla has demonstrated how simple that is, with their cars. You want more range? Pay Tesla to alter the parameters. You want a faster car? Pay Tesla. You want your kid's car to go slower? Pay Tesla.
All modern vehicles are controlled by computers. You set the parameters, and the vehicle performs to spec. It's really that simple.
California is doing nothing more here than to demand access to those parameters, and to limit those parameters. And, hackers will bypass every parameter that California dictates.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @05:16PM (6 children)
Many more powerful cars have had speed governors set to the safety limits of the OEM tires, for decades. Something that Fords with Firestones could have significantly benefited from, in the 1990s we were seeing regular blowouts on Alligator Alley in the summer due to temperature + speed issues on heavy vehicles like the Explorer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy [wikipedia.org]
Something I noted on the highway: for many years in the 2010s WalMart fleet semi-trucks seemed hard-limited, whether by the engine computer or driver training and GPS monitoring, to not exceed the speed limit by even 1mph.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:16PM (5 children)
Wal-Mart, JB Hunt, Swift, CR England, UPS, and many others have experimented with speed governing their fleets. The states, like Texas and Illinois have also experimented with "split speed limits", that is, one speed limit for light vehicles, and a lower speed limit for heavy vehicles. While some refuse to believe the evidence, it's safest if everyone is moving at about the same speed.
So, governing the speeds on the highway makes sense, if EVERYONE is limited to the same speed. No speed limit for motorcycles, another for trucks, yet another for family cars, and yet another for cops who live for adrenaline rushes.
IMHO, 90 mph would be a good governed limit. Almost no one drives faster than 90 anyway, except really really bad people such as myself and the cops. And, oh yeah, a lot of insane motorcyclists.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:39PM (2 children)
> it's safest if everyone is moving at about the same speed.
I'll definitely agree with that, as long as "about" translates to at least +/-1, less than +/-10 when practical. I don't buy that driving side by side, often in each others' blind spots, is safer than maintaining awareness of a constantly, slowly, changing situation around your vehicle.
A BIG part of my problem with same-speed driving stems from the comfort level that seems to develop with too-short following distances among same speed drivers. All kinds of issues with tailgaters, from the blatantly obvious massive pileups that result when one far up the chain has a problem and the rest are too close to safely avoid each other, to the more subtle road rage inducing blocking of people from changing lanes when they "cut into" an already too small following distance. I basically learned to drive in Miami in the 1980s, and in that ecosystem signaling for a lane change would result 9/10 times with the space you were signaling to move into being closed up by the following car accelerating full throttle to shorten their following distance to less than your car length the moment they saw your signal... so the technique there was to telegraph nothing until you were ready to execute, then start the lane change and give the signal only as a confirmation to the following driver that you are indeed intentionally "taking their place in line and there's nothing they can do about it" and not drifting inattentively.
>another for cops who live for adrenaline rushes.
Also in Miami, I would occasionally encounter cops "playing in traffic" - often with their blue flashers off - attempting to weave through rush hour traffic moving 30-ish mph at an average speed more like 50mph. I suppose they rationalized to themselves that they were "training for emergency response" like the firetrucks who practiced driving on sidewalks to circumvent road blocks, but the only possible real explanation was that they just got off on being able to do it without repercussions. One day a TV news helicopter followed a police car, literally leaving Dunkin Donuts then driving 100+mph on his way home through gaps in rush hour traffic - a few minutes before the end of his afternoon shift.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 29 2024, @01:33AM (1 child)
All good points. You should NEVER ride side by side with another driver, and multiply that NEVER by a thousand fold if you're in the smaller vehicle. A medium sized SUV will squash a motorcycle rider like a pancake, just as an 18 wheeler can cook up a batch of SUV crepes in less than half a hearbeat. To me, "about the same speed" means one guy can drive as much as 5-10 mph under the speed limit, a couple other guys can do 5-10 mph over, and traffic really shouldn't bunch up a whole lot. Well, there's always gonna be rush hour when everyone is doing between 0 and 20 mph in spurts. If everyone is governed at or near the speed limit, that one stupid son of a bitch isn't going to come around a blind curve 40 mph over, and slam into the slow movers that didn't know were there.
I'm not exactly agreeing with those governors, but I'll point out that if vehicles were to be governed, we would probably see a little less road rage, and some fewer multi-vehicle pileups. The number of fatalities in those pile ups might drop some as well. Or, maybe I'm dreaming. 50 mph traffic claims a lot of lives anyway.
Cops. I've got a lot to say about cops and their "privileges", but I'm not going to dive into that here. Suffice to say, I've seen plenty of reckless driving by cops, that they should be held accountable for..
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 29 2024, @02:41AM
Just to add one thing: my favorite "driver assist" tech to-date is following distance regulated cruise control. It's not perfect, but I really appreciate having a button to push that keeps the car at a steady speed, or slows as needed to maintain a good safe following distance, like 3 seconds.
I have never had a car with that tech auto-brake for me based on getting too close to the car ahead, but I understand that they do that too, which I think is a great thing, right up until the meatbag driver starts relying on it instead of paying attention.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:48PM
As for 90mph, a surprising number of vehicles on the road today just aren't capable of safe operation at 90mph. Nevermind my 1300cc 65hp Honda Civic that literally couldn't go that fast even with a mild tailwind, there are plenty of vehicles whose tires aren't in condition to handle those speeds. Then there are brand new tires from a particular manufacturer that periodically aren't made capable of those speeds even when they are brand new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy [wikipedia.org]
I think a significant number of new vehicles are still shipped with speed class N (87mph) tires today. The last replacement tires I bought were class H (130mph), but people who just ask for the cheapest they can get are liable to be getting N. Also, bear in mind that those speed ratings are actually dependent on pavement temperature, vehicle weight, inflation pressure, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:50PM
User name checks out.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Sunday January 28 2024, @06:06PM (2 children)
...It's the subheadline, not even the first paragraph of the article, where they say that yes, you can still go 10 mph over. Which is speeding.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday January 28 2024, @09:07PM (1 child)
Sometimes you need to go slightly over the limit for safety reasons. For example, when overtaking a car that is doing 5kmh under the limit (annoying enough to need to overtake, but would be difficult to do without either a very long patch of clear road or the ability to temporarily go over the limit).
The approach that Weiner is taking is far too prone to error - changes in speed limits, accuracy of the technology, reliance on comms networks etc. 90% of what he's trying to achieve could be done by simply preventing cars from doing more than 80mph, hard baked into the car. Yes, the driver could still speed in a residential zone, but at least the tech would be preventing some of the crazy speeds you see in police chases.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 28 2024, @10:41PM
Weiner is a politician, an "idea man" trying to come up with something simple that resonates with "his base" regardless of whether it could ever actually happen.
You know, like getting a foreign country to pay for a border wall they don't want...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 29 2024, @05:17PM
How about this additional equipment only be required for people who have a habitual pattern of speeding?
On your third speeding ticket you are required to have this equipment. Sort of like requiring equipment to ensure the driver is sober before starting the engine. Why should everyone else need to have this?
Hypothetically, there can be times where an ordinary law abiding driver without a history of speeding may have a legitimate need to speed.
If a lazy person with no education can cross the border and take your job, we need to upgrade your job skills.